A Few Quick Thoughts on the Election

There is, of course, much to be said about the election, but here are three quick thoughts:

1) Trump's achievement was remarkable. He won the Presidency despite the fierce opposition of the American Establishment, including media coverage as uniformly hostile as any major party presidential candidate has received since 1964. There has been much written, including by me, about Trump's flaws, but comparatively little written about his virtues, including the courage it took to persevere in the face of such determined opposition.

2) Last night also marked a remarkable vindication of Pat Buchanan, who pioneered the issues Trump ran on, and Sam Francis, who used the pages of Chronicles to predict the Middle American Revolution we witnessed last night.

3) Four years ago, Mitt Romney lost Ohio and the industrial Midwest because Barack Obama's advertising blitz focused on Romney's career at Bain Capital convinced voters that Romney was a champion of sending American jobs abroad. This year, Clinton ran a different kind of ad, one that I heard on the radio several times. In this ad, a steelworker from Carrollton, Ohio told listeners that they might think he was supporting Trump, but then went on to explain why he was supporting Clinton. Four years ago, of course, no one would have pictured a blue collar worker as the prototypical Romney voter. The fact Clinton felt compelled to run this ad shows why Trump won Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, and likely will win Michigan. It is amazing how competitive Republicans can be in the industrial Midwest if they eschew the shibboleths of free trade and globalization.